When YouTube hit the internet in 2005, it changed the way we view videos online. Suddenly Web users could search for almost anything and watch related videos instantly. Now viewing video has become an everyday activity and users all over the world spend billions of hours watching online video.

I have been fortunate enough be part of a closed beta realease for a new video service called Image2Play developed by Korean startup Enswers. As soon as I used Image2Play, I knew straight away that it had that ‘wow’ factor which could definitely revolutionize the online videos space in the same way that YouTube has. I took a closer look at the company to find out more about Image2Play and its other services.

Enswers was founded five years ago and the company’s name is a combination of ‘entertainment’ and ‘answer’. Essentially, the company aims to provide entertainment-related solutions and products, and is deeply involved in online media and search technology. Enswers recently announced that it had been acquired by major operator KT, but the company has been busy developing several products over recent years.

Image2Play

Image2Play is Enswers’ latest service which searches for videos via images on a webpage. Operated through a browser plug-in, the service automatically takes all images displayed on a webpage and runs them through its database of millions of videos in a matter of seconds. If the image returns a match, a play button is displayed in the top-right corner, after which the click of the button instantly plays the video match. Originally only a Chrome plug-in was available but recently support for both Internet Explorer and Firefox was added to the closed beta.

While using the closed beta, I was surprised by just how often I used the service. Whether browsing a news site or blog, once the play button pops up, it is very hard to resist clicking to watch related video content. Though videos appear to only be a minute long, it is enough to give you more information on the image or simply watch a good portion of the video it came from. Enswers also plans to allow embedding in blogs so users who do not have the plug-in installed can still view videos via the service.

Worldwide, the number of users uploading content continues to grow and finding videos or clips of copyrighted material has become a lot harder these days due to sites like YouTube clamping down on unlicensed uploads. Enswers has solved this problem by going straight to media outlets from the beginning and it has agreements to prevent any breach of copyright.

The extensive amount of video available from major networks, cable channels and even movie channels is very impressive. The benefit for broadcasters lies in publicity and revenue, as Enswers also intends to add marketing and purchasing features — users could, for example, purchase a DVD series or movie from the matching search result.

The domestic market in South Korea is Image2Play’s primary target market but the service has already picked up considerable interest internationally. Earlier this year, Enswers was chosen from a number of teams from Korea, China and Japan to demonstrate at the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong. As the video below shows, COO Sherman Li showed how Image2Play technology can also be used in conjunction with mobile devices.

Other Services

Enswers’ other products have also helped the company’s success. In early 2011, it acquired popular Korean entertainment site Soompi, a service that allows users to subtitle episodes of foreign TV programs and dramas so a wider audience can enjoy them. Enswers revamped the website using its own media technology. The site has been hugely successful worldwide drawing approximately 6 million visitors per month, boosted by the growing popularity of Korean dramas and music around the world.

One of the company’s earlier services – enswer.me – is a video search tool which utilizes a number of different video sites including YouTube, Veoh, Hulu and other international sites such as China’s Youku, Japan’s NicoNicoDouga and Korea’s Pandora.tv.

Searches through the service cross-reference to filter out irrelevant duplicate videos, showing the number of overlapping videos that exist across the services. According to its website, Enswer.me uses “proprietary ClusterRank search algorithm and VideoFuse large-scale clustering technology” to do this.

Enswers’ products and technology are also licensed to other businesses, such as Platform-V, a P2P platform which monetizes downloadable content while ensuring copyright of content is protected. Other solutions such as audio fingerprinting technology and interactive TV with smartphones are also listed as solutions that Enswers offers.

Though Image2Play will initially be aimed at the domestic market first, PR manager Kim Ju-yeon explains that Enswers sees the service as having worldwide potential:

“Of course all companies compete in the market, but going global is one of our main goals and we can reach it with our technology.”

➤ Enswers | Image2Play

As the new year begins, here are five trends that are likely to make an impact in the online media world in 2011.

Cloud-based media libraries

The idea of ‘iTunes in the cloud’ has been floating around for years and despite rumors throughout 2010, it hasn’t materialized yet. In 2011, we’re likely to see the idea of a personal music library you have access to anywhere with an Internet connection become a reality.

Thus far only small players like mSpot and LaLa (purchased and closed down by Apple in 2010) have addressed cloud-based media solutions in this way. However, only the big players like Apple and Google (rumored to be launching its own music service with a cloud-based element soon) are likely to have the server capacity to make the idea a reliable, scaleable consumer proposition.

A more readable Web

In 2010, the success of the iPad forced publishers to reconsider the way they presented their content and Flipboard was a wakeup call to the idea of reformatting existing content in a more readable way. Expect technologies that allow Flipboard-style experiences on the Web to take a hold in 2011.

We recently covered Treesaver, a company that will soon offer a set of customizable templates that publishers can use to present their content with a highly readable magazine-style app. It appears Flipboard is heading for the browser too. Will it be a fad or a revolution? Time will tell but expect to see a number of experiments in this field this year.

Shakeout in the e-book market

As 2010 drew to a close, the battle for the e-book market notched up a gear with the launch of the Google eBookstore. Meanwhile, Amazon is aggressively advertising its Kindle ecosystem and Barnes & Noble’s latest Nook device has just arrived. That’s not to mention the other players out there like Sony. It’s likely we’ll see some shakeout in 2011, with less successful players pulling out or adjust their strategies significantly.

One thing’s for sure, a wide range of competing formats isn’t good for consumers and the public will most likely opt for the easiest, best supported service. A possible outcome is that some of the less successful players will adopt a more successful rival’s format. Third-party Kindle devices, anyone? With the right economic incentives from Amazon, it could be a win for all concerned.

Online 3D video goes mainstream

3D video on the Web is nothing new; YouTube has hosted 3D videos for some time. However, as Internet-connected 3D TVs start to become affordable and make the idea of watching three-dimensional content more popular, expect to see the concept become more popular online too.

It’s certainly likely that we’ll see big media outlets start pumping out a lot more 3D video but if handheld 3D video cameras can be made popular at a cheap enough pricepoint we could well see an explosion of user-generated three-dimensional content too. By the end of the year, a pair of 3D glasses could be a useful accessory when watching online video.

Beyond that, how about an iPhone 3D? Nintendo’s forthcoming 3DS handheld shows that portable 3D gaming is viable – who will be the first to bring it to the mobile world?

The “Post-blog” Blog

Far from the scrappy upstart competitors to major news outlets that they used to be, blogs are now an important news source that often breaking stories well before traditional outlets. As they mature, expect websites that started as blogs to transform into something different.

Gawker Media head honcho Nick Denton recently wrote an explanation of how his network was “Moving beyond the blog” with a new layout that ditched the decade-old “reverse chronological list of posts” blog format to a more magazine-like template that highlights the biggest stories of the day.

Elsewhere, Mashable has entered into content deals that see some of its stories published in print media as it expands its business beyond the online realm. In 2011, we’ll most likely see more deals of this kind as smart, nimble blogs capitalize on their content production strengths in new ways.